Yet another newbie with starter issues
I'm a complete beginner when it comes to sourdough and almost so when it comes to baking in general. I have read a ton on the internet, but as with most subjects, I'm finding the internet wisdom is often incomplete and/or contradictory.
I started a starter 6 days ago. I had only 1 kind of flour in the house, so I used it: bleached all purpose flour of some generic store brand. For the first 3 days I followed a recipe similar to what is on King Arthur and many other sites, with a 1:1:1 ratio, and was so pleased with the amount of bubbles and even some rise that I was seeing. Then at about 3.5 days, everything halted. I did more internet research and luckily came across Debra Wink's pineapple juice story.
So I now understand much better what is going on, and am not exactly distressed by it. I just want to get through this "dead phase" as quickly as possible and get to a healthy vigorous starter and do some baking!
In the meantime, yesterday, I was lucky to be able to obtain some KA whole wheat flour and KA unbleached all purpose flour, and am now using a 50/50 mix of that (by weight) for feedings.
My issue is that my starter has been in this "dead" phase for 3 days and doesn't seem to be coming out of it, even with the addition of better food yesterday.
At some point a day or two ago, when I found the pineapple juice story, I decided to divide my starter in 2 and continue 1 batch with the 1:1:1 ratio, and other batch with a 2:1:1 ratio. My theory behind that is that since the proper microflora balance is dependent on an acidic environment developing, I'm only slowing it down every time I feed. By feeding less, it should get more acid more quickly. All feedings for both cultures have been 1x/day because with so little activity I don't think the culture needs 2x/day yet.
But neither of these 2 cultures seem to be doing anything at all other than a very minimal amount of bubbling which varies slightly but does not seem to be increasing overall.
Help! How do I get it going again? I know part of the answer is patience but I'm sure there are some things I could do to make it happen faster and some things I should avoid or else they'll make it happen slower.
What is the room temperature where the starter is kept?
About 70F (21C). Every time I've checked it's been between 68-72, but by far the most readings have been 70.
I forgot to mention that this morning I decided to try keeping it in the microwave (not running) with some warm water. I aimed to have the temp in the microwave about 80 and let it gradually drop from there. But later today I read somewhere that the warmer temps are better for developing bacteria and if I understand correctly, at this point I hopefully have the right bacteria and am just waiting for the yeasts to take hold. So it spent roughly 12 hours at warmer temps then I stopped that.
Edit to add Celcius temp
because at the cooler temps of 70°F you'll be waiting for weeks from the start. Count each day like two days skipping the small flour additions to every second or third day if you still want to feed it. You could just let it sit without feeding for several days too. And there is nothing wrong with encouraging bacteria with temps over 75°F. 76° would be encouraging yeasts yet not encouraging bacteria too much. Mold is what you want to avoid at the cooler temps. Discard the starter half before you get a cup of the stuff and continue.
If you want to stop babysitting the starter, take 1/8 cup of it, add enough flour to make a dough ball and drop it into a paper lunch bag with about a third to half a cup of flour on the bottom. Coat the dough ball in flour. Make several balls if you want to, that way you can check on it in a week sacrificing one for knowledge. Now crimp the top and maybe staple it. Put it away for a week or two. Mark your calendar Come back to it and break it open, take out the inside muddy culture and feed it if it smells pungent and yeasty. You save a lot of flour this way.
Seasonal changes can play havoc with starters as temperatures go up and down during the day. If you feed, I suggest doing it before the warm part of the day. Since turning off the house heat due to an early spring, my sourdough starter is much slower. I don't mind it too much but make adjustments allowing for longer rise times when using room temps. That carries over to the dough recipes as well.
Thank you so much for your reply!
To clarify the temp question: you mentioned 75F, 76F. My plan that I quickly aborted but could easily go back to was to get the microwave interior to about 80F(27C) using a bowl of warm water, and let the temp gradually return to 70F(21C) or so, before warming the water again. So the average would be about 75F(24C). Does that sound good to you or should I avoid getting up around 80 and try to make the max closer to 76F?
I am so far very much enjoying babysitting my starter, even if I'm also a bit frustrated with seeming to be frozen in place for over 3 days now. But maybe I'll try your dough ball experiment just to see how it goes with some discard, or when I get tired of the babysitting routine.
In the meantime, how do I know when I should feed if you are recommending less than 1x/day? I'm sure the answer is that the starter will tell me, but how will it tell me? What am I looking for? Somewhere I read that you can wait (however long it takes) for it to rise, peak, and start falling again, and you can feed any time after it has started to fall. I don't think I can do that though because I am getting very little if any rise. I am getting more than zero bubbles though. Would it work to stir it down a few times a day and assume whenever I see that the bubbles are no longer continuing to be generated, that is a good time to feed it?
Edit to add Celcius temp.
Does anyone have any input on how to know when I should feed Blob? I've been working on keeping him warmer (right now he's at 77F, after having just refreshed his hot water bottle), so I'm not sure Mini Oven's advice to feed less often applies. I assume there should be some clues in how the starter looks, feels, etc, but I don't know what they are.
it is hard to tell. The biggest problem is overfeeding so better to err on the side of underfeeding right now. You can add a tablespoon of flour every day and some water until it starts smelling more cheesy and thinner and if using a dark flour the mixture lightens slightly in color.
With the warmer temps, Small feeds daily until you start smelling yeast or friends think you are beer brewing in the kitchen. Put a bowl under the jar if you don't have 5x headspace above the starter blob. Just in case. You will see more action when the yeast pop. has increased. Then you can smell and see fermentation raising the blob the high point. Then you can feed more flour. Then remove about 20g to another jar to test feed 1:2:2 (20:40:40) and see what it does. Save the blob in case the 1:2:2 feeding doesn't show any results. If the test doesn't work, go back to the routine with the blob for another day or two.
Thanks again for your input! You are so helpful!
I have one small & skinny glass jar that I figure is good for doing tests in. Today I decided to make a tiny 5:5:4 (that's starter:flour:water, is that the correct order?) that would be extra thick and help me detect if I'm getting any rise at all. I figure I must be getting some because I do have bubbles... just not a lot of them.
Tomorrow I will try your 1:2:2 feeding in that jar. Wish I had more smaller containers available. I'd have 20 different cultures going by now. Lol.
Also today I tasted my starter for the first time. Wow! It's strong. Strong with what flavor I couldn't exactly tell. Sour and something else that was unidentifiable to me. But I didn't think it tasted "bad" in the sense of "spoiled". Too strong to be pleasant, though. Even after feeding (both the 1:1:1 and 2:1:1 cultures), it was noticeably softened but still strong and totally overwhelmed the taste of the flour.
Hi i had exactly the same problem and in the same situation as you,just that my room temp was higher than yours! I also had that dead phase but after about 7days and switching from 100% bread flour to a mix of whole wheat and bread flour as well as slightly reducing the hydration rate, it finally rose (not a lot but still better than 0 rise!!)
I almost gave up on it, so I was very surprised when I saw that it rose above the rubber band hahah
i would advice to just take it easy and keep doing what you’re doing! I know this advice might sound kinda useless cuz that’s what I felt when someone else told me that, but really that’s what you gotta do in the end.
do ignore the perfect constant rise and fall of starters in youtube videos... those just make u feel demoralised
Hey! Thanks for posting. It helps knowing others have made it through this. My understanding is that once the yeast gets going it really takes off fast so I'd guess now that you are seeing rise, you are within only a few days of being able to bake bread!
Do you mean yours was stuck in the dead phase for about 7 days? I think I've had 4 days of dead phase so far. Not sure I can survive 3 more! It's stressful! lol. What gets me is not that it looks dead. Not since I read the Debra Wink's pineapple juice articles that explain what is going on so well. What gets me is that I can't tell where in that dead phase I am. There seems to be zero progress. I've tried reducing feeding because I know it's important not to overdilute and let the pH rise again. But I've also read that if the pH is too low the yeast won't move in then, either. Other than being able to test the pH (and I have no way to do that), how does one know which side of that magic pH sweet spot you are on?
Tomorrow I'm going to do the test suggested by Mini Oven and take a small bit of starter and give it a big feeding. We'll see how that goes.
My little experiment yesterday with using a lower hydration didn't do much. It rose about 1-2mm. Probably less than 10%. I've decided I'm just going to let that one sit for a few days and see if it starts to do anything.
Today I started 2 new experiments. I did a small batch at 1:2:2 and another small batch at 1:4:4 to see if extra food would perk it up. I don't really expect it to but worth a try. So far basically no activity in either of these.
I'm a little worried my 2 cultures are getting worse. Why? I'm on day 8. Activity died down to very minimal bubbling around 3.5 days in. I've never had literally zero activity but it's been pretty minimal for 5 days now. 4 days ago I divided my culture and since then 1 has been getting 1:1:1 feedings and the other has been getting 2:1:1 feedings. I've seen a slight but definite increase in activity over the past 3 days since I was able to get some WW flour and also started keeping the culture at higher temps. However, over the past 24 hours the amount of bubbling has gone down to perhaps the lowest it's ever been.
Really hoping someone can shed some light on what's going on here and help me get this thing headed in the right direction.
How’s the smell? I remember mine smelling really yeasty on the 2nd last day of the no activity stage. And then it turned slightly more sour smelling and back to yeasty smelling before it rose the next day.
it went something like
day 1: nasty smelling but when I scooped off the froth it smelled slightly sweet
day2: still nasty
day3-7: sour (tasted extremely sour as well)
day 8: yeasty! Quite strong as well (no rise)
day 9: still yeasty but with tints of sour
day10: yeasty and it finally rose
also I understand the feeling of being over concerned about the starter (I spent over 4hours trying to troubleshoot mine!!) afterwards I kind of gave up and just messed around like extending the no feed period and using different ratios
I doubt the messing around was the factor that led to the rise but rather the yeast just needed enough time to get comfortable. I doubt that it dies as easily as you think. keep it up!
also you’re right on how quickly the yeast takes off. Mine only rose 1/4 its original height on day 8 but today it managed to double :)
I'm on day 9 now. So maybe I'll see rise tomorrow! One can hope!
I am encouraged that after hardly seeing a bubble all day yesterday, all 5 parts of Blob (yes I'm running 5 different versions atm) had bubbles when I checked this morning. Pretty minor, but I'll take any sign of improvement at this point.
Today I had enough of the starter and just decided to bake. Many things went wrong. I added too much water, levain wasn’t strong enough to make the dough rise, I had a shaping disaster because of how wet the dough is, Dough just spreads out on the counter no matter how many times I try to make some surface tension.... I won’t be surprised if I bake it tomorrow morning and all I get is a brick.
kind of disappointed, as I really looked forward to baking it:(
how’s ur starter going??
Oh no! So sorry your first bake is not going according to plan! Don't give up though! Look at it as an educational experience and learn everything you can from your mistakes as well as whatever successes you have in the process, and you'll do better next time! Also I've seen quite a few people post pics of "pancakes" for their first loaves, but most of them say altho it isn't pretty to look at and the texture is more dense than they want, it still tastes good.
My starter seems to have finally figured itself out! I'm still holding my breath, a little afraid it'll get worse again, but I think it's likely I'll be able to make something tomorrow. Maybe just pancakes with some discard, but I'll still be thrilled!
I'm not sure, but I'm kind of inclined to believe the temp I was keeping it at was too warm. Maybe the thermometer I was using is not accurate. I stopped using the warm water bottle and went back to just room temperature and within 48 hrs of the lower temp, 2 different cultures took off with lots of bubbles! It sure happens fast when it happens. I don't think it was any "just right" tweaking of the feeding ratios, because the 2 that took off had been fed pretty differently from each other over the few days leading up to when they took off. Altho I will say it was NOT the experiment I did with bigger feeding. That seemed a total bust.